Many of us are "gear addicts" and like not only stats but also appearances. We want to have characters that look unique - which is not as easy in this game as in others, except through gear. Our characters matter to us, and unlike in many MMOs, in SWTOR we actually get to SEE them a lot (via conversations cinematics). Players, like myself, have been acquiring matching sets of gear since early access, and to suddenly make that gear sub-par will make a lot of very angry gamers - and you should know that we gamers love our rage fests! Conversely, I can see the reasoning behind this, to a point. The problem that is glaring (the gorilla in the room) is that many of the amour sets are not complete at this time, at least not in orange. Parts of a set are obtained through flashpoints, heroics, and crafted items, with the end result being a mish mash of running all over the game. That is entertaining for some the first time, but few of us are just dieing to do it again. Yes, I admit, I am a gear addict. I currently have 12 sets of matching armour, with 5 more sets that I can not find all the pieces for, or the same name pieces do not truly match (green and white head, chest, legs, with a yellow and purple set of boots, as an example). If the change allows crafters to gain access to all schematics for the matching set, then I see no reason not to retro fit old gear, BUT, if that is not the case then older gear will need to be retro fitted. See, I really have no interest in running a level 21 heroic to get a "bind on pickup" helmet that is the only one that matches the set I love, just so I can have an augment slot. Instead, I won't buy that 13th set of armour from the crafters (or in my case the set of schematics from the GTN, since I took armour crafting). Diatium Onslaught greaves are a good example; I've NEVER seen a chest that matches. If someone had looted a matching chest, to have a unique set of armour, and thus a unique appearance for their character, only to find that the morning of 1.2, their entire gear and effort is basically worthless, I would understand them being upset about it. TL' DR - either make a way for augments to be retro fitted, or make sure crafters can have access to schematics for all parts of a set of armour if any piece is crafted.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I can say that I am VERY picky about the guilds I join. I am too old for drama, and I don't care what some 13 year old boy thinks about some girl at school. I don't care to listen to some one rant about politics in vent. I don't care to spend my "leisure" time being inundated by the drama in other people's lives. With that said, I have a wonderful small, mature, raid centric guild that I'm very pleased with right now. Took me only 3 months to find it. As for grouping, the same thing. I have played less then 3 hours 'solo' in my 14 days of continuous game play (per /played, and that was a while ago!) My husband and I enjoy our "date nights" every night, and running content as a duo. We love inviting real life friends, and we love playing the game our way. We're actually very social, BUT.... I don't want to HAVE to group into a 16 person raid just to make a vambrace. I don't want to be forced to do X before I can do Y. What if I had no intention of raiding, and then am invited on a hard mode ops.... but have to decline because I am not geared up? It's the gating that is the problem. I would be thrilled with a sliding scale system, where I could duo a flashpoint, and have a 1 in a million chance of a drop. It'd be EASIER to get the item in a full group raid, but I would still have the option of saying "screw you guys, you're annoying me today" and drag the poor mistreated man out to tank for me. See, back in the 90s, we had "hard core" groups who just did things. Now, a "hard core" group requires me to commit to a game as if it were a second job. Since I already have 2 full time jobs, and a family to think about, I really don't want to make my HOBBY into something I dread. It's the 'forcing players to" and "make players" and "have to" parts that people have problems with. Not the option, but the lack of options.

I play a light side BH, a light side IA, and a dark SI so far. For me, I've come to realization that I'm simply a goody two shoes, as even when I try to be evil, I just fail But seriously, playing light side on Empire is very doable. I have more of the feeling of "I want to make the Empire a good place" through out my stories, rather then that I'm some type of freak in the populace. Of course, I'm also drawn more to the pew pew types of classes then the force wielding ones, so take my personal experiences with a shaker of salt.

I actually like it. For me, it lends a touch of reality to the game, and brings in a bit of the feel of the movies. Of course, much of my opinion is based upon the way I've played my character - as that of an aspiring and talented agent hoping to work her way up the ranks. I noticed that when Watcher 2 was promoted, she didn't get larger shoulder pads, nor did she get crazy heavy armour plating. For me, this same mentality applies to my own character. As an example THIS is what I think of when i think of my agent's clothing options.

I have a Dell Dimension E 521: AMD 3500+ xfx 7800 gt with 3MG RAM Yep, I'm under even the minimum specs. Yes, I can play the game smoothly (except for some sound lag when entering new areas). Now, knowing that my machine is a complete Piece of Bantha Poodoo, I can't really run much else at the same time, or I experience problems, but when I get ready to play, I just turn off anything I'm not using. Oddly, the game plays fine. My character is responsive, my friends don't want to kill me due to long waits or inept reactions in combat, either. My only real "complaint" (which I have no room to complain about) are the long loading screens. Kind of a "dur" thing really considering what I'm running on. My point being that maybe it's not the game that's the problem (necessarily). ISP bottle necking, multiple computers on his network hogging bandwidth, or unnecessary programs (adware? Spyware?) could cause the problem you described.

Nope, and was actually commenting on how filled some of the planets are (my PC is a PoS, and people make me lag). The higher end of the curve has seen a drop off (less people on Voss, as an example) but lower level areas are jammed packed, and fleet keeps getting more populated every time I go there.

Here's the thing. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that the world quests were the same across classes. It took me around 30 minutes in game to realize that there was way more content available then I needed to attain the level I wanted. And so, using a very small bit of logic, I figured out that I can only do the content I like, and level up with out over leveling the class quests. Get a mission to free a guy, and skip the bonus(Kill X) section of it. Find a quest that is totally out of character for my toon, and refuse the quest. Get part way through the quest and get bored, so delete the quest from my log. I now have a level 47 Bounty Hunter, a level 25 Inquisitor, and I'm currently playing a level 18 sniper, with little more then the class quests (yeah, she should be 21 right now, but I'm still acing the content like it's on easy mode). I've only repeated the quests I liked, and wanted to repeat. Hell, I have yet to do a single non class quest on Taris, I missed out on so much content on Alderaan, and while I did get into the story on Voss, that's because I actually was entranced with the world quest story there. My next character through might just skip most of it. But, I like the challenge. I think I'll try doing my powertech with nothing but class quests and flash points. Should be a nice challenge, and keep things interesting for me.

Thank you for this. You have just made my day.

I always thought it was pretty easy to figure out. When the baddie turns to look at me, it's never a good thing (I'm a healer). When it turns to look at the tank, then things are going well. If the DPSer has it facing him, I need to up my healing a bit. Seriously, the baddie actually turns to face the guy it's most angry at, and that is a clear indicator of threat. A good tank can pull it before the MOB casts, hits, or causes any problems (at least mine can). And some of them will cast at multiple people, but this is always indicated by some type of graphical feature. A swirling white light on the ground means a flame spitting probe is about to land there, so I should move. A large white square thing means a missle is about to hit me... so I should move. An add shooting at me is indicated by (usually red) blaster bolts streaking at me from the source. Well, you get the idea.

Personally I could care less about day/night cycles. At best they were an inconvenience, and at worst I never noticed them. At times needing to alter my gamma settings did break my immersion, and with as dark as some areas already are, well, you get the idea. I do have to disagree with you about the NPCs. A few examples: on Taris, I knew that the Rakghouls were going to have force sensitives simply from listening to a pair of NPCs talk about it. On Hutta, I giggled as some guy tried to pick up a girl in the cantina, and obviously failed at it. There have been more, and a few times (Belsavis) I even stopped to listen (and giggled at the writer's sick sense of humour). Of course, I also didn't blaze through everything, and I'm well known to simply stop and smell the roses at times. I will say that weather would be a WONDERFUL addition though. I miss the rain storms, or dust storms, a bit of fog, and the like. Those things really bring immersion to me.

I have a level 47 Bounty Hunter, a 20ish Inquisitor, a 15ish Trooper, and a few assorted barely out of the box characters. I too found the game to be exceptionally easy, and was a bit disapointed. That was before I began playing with a friend who is new to MMOs. You see, I have controling the companions, and using my character to it's maximum advantage down to habit. Playing a ranged class I can see the proper distance, and such. No, nothing that makes me special, just a sign of way too many hours of free time, and little life. My new to MMO friend though, is still learning how to play within the roles of the group, and how to maximize his potential. His mad agro skills have created some truly amuzing and challenging content for me! So, I can now see why the difficulty level is set here, but I only have ONE complaint. If you are too low of a level, you can't even touch something above you, and the gap isn't a large one. I want to say it's like 3 or 4 levels (it's been a couple of weeks since I tried, and sadly I didn't commit the gap to memory). I tried to do some content on Alderaan at level 21, and got nothing but "miss, miss, resist, miss". Take this away, let me hit the thing for 1 or 2 points of damage, and I'd be thrilled! I could challenge myself with super over leveled flash points (wonder how badly my level 20 would get smoked in a level 50 flash point! That'd be GREAT!). If that one thing was fixed, I'd be just fine with the difficulty level of the game.

I'm always a little confused by the statements saying "it's just a WOW clone" or any variant thereof. Now, I've never played WoW, which might be a part of the problem. So, the game is just like wow... because it has quests? Skills? Hot keys? Skill bars? So does every MMO I've ever played, even SWG and UO (which are not theme park games like the rest I played). I mean, what is it that makes it such a clone? From what I'm seeing, no one can say, and I can't seem to wrap my mind around it. From what's been listed, even the F2P Asian grinders count as WOW clones. Now, complaining about bugs, that I can get. If you don't like it, show the company with your sub, they won't listen otherwise (most don't at least, although I have to give BW credit for listening some, as the patches suggest). But the WoW clone thing, I can't understand.

And denied, and confirmed... all in a vague way. Will they allow UI modification only? Complete add on systems? No one has said. If they have, no one has dared to link to the source. Plus, keep in mind that the game was scheduled to release in "spring 2011" too. So we do tend to take things with a grain of salt.

I also think it might be a bit generational. I mean MMO generations, not player age. Those of us who started in the UO/EQ age had it rough. Dialup was the best we could get, we had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways... No wait, wrong story. But seriously, we learned to love a feeling of struggling to overcome. That feeling is mostly removed by many (not all) of the add-ons that people are begging for. See the comments about grid healing. I used to have a rush trying to heal a 20 person group, as the only healer, with only a mouse and a single hot key heal (bandages, which required an item stack in inventory!). The thrill of keeping up is what made me addicted to the genre of MMOs. Compare that to the crowd that came in with EQ2, WOW, and even more modern games. Those games made a brilliant decision to market to more casual gamers, and then give those casual gamers everything that they need (via add-on systems) to be successful. And successful they were/are. For that MMO generation, their excitement is in chasing the next level of loot, or in game recognition. There's nothing wrong with either play style, but they are vastly different. When you try to make both of these styles of gamers happy, well.... we get the debate we're having. And thank YOU for forming intelligent and coherent questions, as opposed to the common "so you hate add-ons, doesn't that mean you just suck" type of questions.

Oh my. You're serious? I have to say, I'm a bit taken aback that this is something that needs to be explained. I thought it was one of the concepts of real life. My appologies though, let me try: I kill faster. I have less group members die. I am able to complete more challenging content. These are simple examples of competing against yourself. If at first I don't succeed, then I try again, and enjoy the attempt. Here's a specific example for you. Attempt a 4+ heroic on Alderaan with only 2 players and 2 companions. It's a 4 person group, right? Get smoked when we first start. Improve our gear, discuss tactics, and try again. Make it half way through. That's progress. Change tactics a bit more, and try yet again, and complete the heroic. Each attempt made progress, then journey was entertaining, and working within the group with the group dynamics is a form of competing against myself and my previous attempts. End result: great date night, much giggling and foul language yelled, and a memorable event that I will be able to recall 10 days later. Unlike raids where the entire group is using an add on, and I couldn't tell you about how it went the day after, except that we achieved the silly virtual reward. My enjoyment is the experience, not the loot.